Borrowed Levels

Chapter 12: The Gray Lantern

On the fourth night at sea, the storm found them.

It rolled in from the east like a wall, black and enormous, tearing the sky open with lightning. The Gray Lantern climbed each wave and slid down the other side, her timbers groaning, her single lamp swinging wildly at the masthead.

Ren had never been on the ocean before. He had never imagined it would be so loud.

"Secure the cargo!" Captain Tave bellowed. "Hold fast! Mister Ren, if you're going to be sick, do it downwind!"

Pip was already being sick, bent over the rail with Hesk's hand firmly planted between her shoulder blades. Dara lashed crates with a coil of rope and a stream of inventive swearing. Ren wedged himself against the mainmast and tried not to think about how many things were trying to kill them.

Then the water beneath the hull went very still.

"That's wrong," said the captain quietly.

A ridge of foam crested to starboard. Then another. Something long and dark rose out of the sea in the lightning's glare. It had a head like a broken anchor, rows of crooked teeth, and a body that went on and on, coiling around the ship like a rope.

"Tidewyrm," Captain Tave whispered. "Gods in the deep."

The ship lurched. The wyrm's coils tightened, and every plank screamed. A sailor went over the side with a shout. Pip screamed too, and Ren moved before he had decided to.

He had no stone skin anymore. No cave bear strength. The loans had dissolved with everything else. All he had was a sword Aldric had sharpened for him and thirty years of life he could not afford to lose.

He ran across the heaving deck and cut at the coil nearest the rail.

The blade bounced. The scales were thick as armor, and the force of the swing nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket. The wyrm hissed and flicked its head toward him, and the Ledger woke like an alarm.

[ HOLDER IN DANGER. ] [ COLLATERAL AVAILABLE: TIDEWYRM (ALIVE). ] [ OFFER: BORROW SCALE-HIDE (COST: 0.2 YEARS) ]

His breath caught. He had sworn he would never borrow again.

But Pip was on the other side of that coil, and the ship was breaking apart.

He took one heartbeat to feel ashamed.

Yes.

The hide came over him like cold armor. The next cut sliced clean through the scales, and the wyrm shrieked. Black blood sprayed across the deck. Hesk dropped her shield and charged. Dara hurled a fire flask at the creature's eye, and the whole sea lit up orange for one furious second.

Ren climbed the thrashing coils with his sword in both hands, and drove it down through the soft hollow behind the skull.

The Tidewyrm shuddered once. Then it sank, slowly, into the dark water, taking its coils with it.

The storm lasted another hour. By the end, nobody had the strength to speak. Ren slid down the mast and sat on the wet deck, breathing in ragged gasps. The Ledger window hung in front of him.

[ BORROWED: 0.2 YEARS. ] [ MONSTER DEFEATED: TIDEWYRM. ] [ SURPLUS: +0.9 YEARS. ] [ NET BALANCE: +0.7 YEARS. ]

He stared at it, stunned. He had come out ahead.

"Ren?" Dara knelt beside him, soaked and shivering, with a gash across her forehead. "Are you hurt?"

"No." He laughed weakly. "I think I just bought back eight months of my life."

"With a sea monster?"

"With a very large sea monster."

Pip crawled over, green-faced and shaking, and flopped against his side. "I hate boats," she said.

"We know," said Dara.

It was just before dawn when Ren noticed the new line in the corner of his sight. It had not been there when the storm broke. It was written in a handwriting he did not know, rushed and uneven.

[ MESSAGE FROM ACCOUNT: UNKNOWN HOLDER ] [ "STOP. DO NOT COME TO CALLOWAY. THEY WILL TAKE YOU TOO." ]

He read it four times.

Then he looked up. Beyond the bow, on the horizon, a faint gold line was breaking the dark. It was land, and a harbor full of tiny lights.

"Captain," he said. "How far to Calloway?"

Tave squinted at the glow, then at him. "By sunrise. Why?"

Ren closed his hand around his father's coin.

"No reason," he said.